


Say Something Ordinary

by TheWormThatTurns



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2675237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWormThatTurns/pseuds/TheWormThatTurns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soul mates exist. They know one another, if they meet, by the words on their flesh. The first words they will speak to one another. Molly Hooper is one person amongst millions, if not billions, born with a banal remark on her skin. True love is hard to find. AU. f/f & f/m, mostly the latter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Molly and Irene

* * *

**Molly and Irene:**   
_The Woman who beat out all the rest for her little heart._

* * *

Uni always seemed so adult, so final when she was young. Only grown-up people went there. Being there now, she knew that wasn't true at all. If anything, the adult world could be crueller at times. Everyone still whispered, they just pretended they didn't. And she hadn't gone deaf yet.

  
She was odd Molly, the girl — woman — who wanted to work with dead people because she wasn't good with living ones. Shy Molly who ducked her head when she smiled. Frigid Molly who didn't put out, didn't know when to have a good time before her soul mate finally showed up and who knew how many bloody decades that could take, hm? Foolish Molly whose heart picked up a little every time she heard someone say the words, 'Good morning.' Sad Molly whose heart always sank back down when she never, ever said someone else's special words in return. Stupid Molly who someday hoped that the first thing she said to Sherlock Holmes would someday magically appear on his unmarked flesh despite those words having been said months ago already and God, she was hopeless wasn't she?

  
So it didn't strike her as strange when, not many years later, after the gauntlet of school was traded for the loneliness of St Bart's, she trudged into her small flat to find a woman waiting within, one who said, simply, 'Good morning.'

Well, the stranger in her flat thing was strange, but not the greeting itself.

  
Having worked an unaccustomed shift — she was a morning person through and through — this unexpected guest, intruder, and probable murderer seemed a hallucination brought on by too much caffeine and too little sleep. Yes, that must have been it. Just your run of the mill nervous breakdown, seeing a woman dressed in lingerie at a quarter to six in the morning, lounging on the furniture as if she had always lived there.

  
'Er,' Molly said as she fumbled for her mobile somewhere in the pockets of her voluminous wool coat. She was twenty-eight and too young for death. 'I'm Molly Hooper and you are?'

  
Her guest slipped off the back of the sofa where she had been perched in a way that reminded Molly of her young cat Toby, movements predatory beneath the inviting exterior. She smoothly turned on her bare feet. There, dark against the white flesh between her shoulder blades, were the words that had just tumbled from Molly's own mouth.

  
That sight hit Molly square in the chest. People said the heavens opened up, that sometimes you lost your head, that vertigo set it — and they were right. Tears rose unbidden to her eyes. This was it. The moment she had waited so long for. Her was the person who would love her, love her deeply and forever. Pulse thudding, she anchored herself against the front door. 'You're a woman.'

  
'Does it matter?'

  
_No._ A woman. The woman. Molly never thought ... except maybe once or twice, but ... and she was beautiful, too beautiful for someone who liked to wear fuzzy pink jumpers and lipstick that never made her mouth look right. It was cruel to give her someone so lovely. 'H-how did you find me?'

  
'I have your name on me. Granted, I had to go through quite a few Molly Hoopers before I came to the right one, but it was only a matter of time before I found you, darling.'

  
And that word, that last word, finally made _good morning_ sound beautiful to Molly's ears.

 

* * *


	2. Molly and Jim

* * *

**Molly and Jim:**  
 _A new plan hatches unexpectedly and that's fine by him._

* * *

Molly Hooper was used to terrible questions and comments and actions. She was used to the unexpected, the unwanted, the unnerving. Working with, or rather for, sometimes it seemed, Sherlock Holmes accustomed her to such interruptions.

But the man fiddling with ... whatever he was fiddling with in her office was emphatically not Sherlock Holmes.

  
Still, she didn't want to be rude; the cables he was touching belonged to her computer and they were probably important. And it was unlikely that he had just wandered into the building without anyone noticing, so he was surely here for legitimate reasons. She settled for clearing her throat instead of actually speaking.

  
A sleek, dark head poked up from behind her desk. The face accompanying it might have been called handsome, or close to it, especially when he smiled as broadly as he did. 'Oh, didn't mean to startle you!'

  
She was long past flinching at that phrase. It isn't exactly unheard of. Just something people said. 'I'm sorry, but what are you doing under my desk with all those plugs?'

  
The very moment she finished speaking, a strange warmth unfurled in the place where her heart was. Her insides gave a vicious tug. The flesh of her wrist burned. A thousand stories, from books, from the telly, from anecdotes, flashed around in her head and she knew, simply knew that this was soul meeting soul. She wasn't going to die alone after years of futile mornings, like one of those sad people who lost their markings. Someone existed in the world for her.

  
His smile evaporated in that moment. He blinked slowly and stood quickly.

  
Her first instinct, the one she stopped, was to step back as he stalked forward. Molly trembled everywhere. Would he touch her? Could she touch him? She reached out to stroke his face and found her palm aflame where their skin met. When her thumb ran over his mouth, he kissed it almost experimentally.

  
The black eyes that appraised her anew shone with hunger and delight. In a tone that sounded smoother, darker than before and completely at odds with his casual appearance, he said, 'Well, well, this complicates the game.'

  
* * *

  
The problem with the fates giving a psychopath a soul mate was that madmen never did anything by half-measures. Once Jim tasted this fresh emotion, so warm and new, something that wasn't another shade of rage or hatred, he wanted very much to keep it, and, naturally, the person attached to it. Desiring someone to remain alive for reasons other than the practical, the utilitarian was a novelty in his book and he so _loved_ novelties.

  
Double lives were a bit boring, true, but he had never attempted one before right under the noses of the Holmes brothers. God, he would have to keep up the farce of Jim from IT for years.

  
A lifetime, perhaps.

  
How _fun_.

 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn't help but switch it up with Jim's POV. No regrets.


	3. Molly and John

* * *

**Molly and John:**   
_Ugly jumper twins and professional Sherlock herders._

* * *

They didn't speak the first time they met. Well, technically they were just in the same room together and didn't meet at all because she was only bringing Sherlock coffee. In fact, they didn't speak until after she has met, kissed, and slept with Jim, a man who was not her soul mate, a man who didn't seem to be anyone's soul mate at all, judging by the relatively blank canvas of his body, or what she remembered of it. But that was all right. She might never find whoever is "meant" for her, so she might as well take what affection she can find. Most people get a lot less than that in life.

  
(So her mother kept telling her.)

  
But Jim floated by the doorway and changed everything without meaning to. She introduced him to Sherlock first, of course, and then to the shorter blond man whose name she realised she hadn't yet heard, her words trailing out pathetically, '... and, er ... sorry.'

  
'John Watson. Hi,' he replied.

  
That little sentence tilted Molly's world on its axis. After that, it didn't matter that Sherlock made a rude observation because under the shock of this lighting strike, _nothing_ else mattered to her. Something fluttered inside her stomach as John met her eyes and kept meeting them. There was kindness in his soft face, one she couldn't help but like. Thank God for that. What was tall, dark, and constantly annoyed compared to a sweet smile and warm eyes?

  
She rolled back her left sleeve so he could see the words she had known for so long and said, 'I-I think you might be this particular John Watson.' Her hands shook, a feeling that seemed ready to travel all over her body. 'There's quite a few of you in the world, I'll have you know.'

  
'Well ...' he said, tugging down his collar just enough to show her words along his collarbone — so typical that the first thing she said to him was an apology. 'I'd say neither of us really gave much of a lead for the other.'

  
'Sorry,' they said at once, reflexively.

  
Both Sherlock and Jim looked dismayed, no doubt for entirely different reasons.

  
'Do you like cats?' she said.

  
'I love them,' John said.

  
Sherlock started to say something.

  
John amended, 'I love them now, if you love them.' And he gave her that lopsided smile of his again.

  
'Of _course_ she loves cats,' Sherlock said with a look to the ceiling. 'The amount of fur attached to her clothing should indicate that. You would have to be blind to miss the obvious indicators of loneliness and desper —'

  
'Sherlock?' John said.

  
'What?'

  
'Just shut up a little bit, yeah?'

  
Amazingly, he did.

  
Maybe happy endings were possible too. How nice it would be if they were.

 

* * *


	4. Molly and Mycroft

* * *

**Molly and Mycroft:**   
_He will, in private, call her Peel._

* * *

It was the third month of her acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes that the car came for her. The paint shone like rain on a road and the windows too. Very official looking and very illegally parked on the corner where Molly stood. Who could possibly be in it? Were they looking at her now? Catching a glimpse of her shabby appearance in the glittering window — God, had she really looked like _that_ when Sherlock dropped by earlier? — she immediately looked away to the traffic rolling by and prayed for the light to change. If it would, she could cross right now, get home, and drag herself into a nice, hot bath to wash away the misery of her workday.

  
She was so bloody tired that she thought payphones were ringing at her as she passed them. Coincidence, of course. The whole "cameras following her" thing was very likely a hallucination brought on by last night's mere three hours of sleep.

  
The car door closest to her opened and a woman appeared in the gap it left. 'Molly Hooper.'

  
Her name coming from the mouth of a posh stranger was too much for the pathologist. She simply stared in response as the traffic lights changed and pedestrians milled around her.

  
That was enough to make the woman look away from the Blackberry she held. There was a touch of annoyance to her voice as she said, 'You're Molly Hooper, correct?'

  
'I, er, well, yes. But how do you know that?'

  
'Remember the phones ringing for you?'

  
'The were ri —'

  
'And the CCTV cameras watching you?'

  
Molly's throat constricted. That was real. It wasn't imaginary. Oh God. 'I'm being watched?'

  
'Yes, and now that we've established just how well you are being monitored, any thoughts of running away must seem very foolish.' The woman patted the space beside her. 'It's best that you take a seat.'

  
Shaking, Molly did just that. She'd watched enough telly to know what happened to people like her in situations like this. Anyway she went about it, she was dead. If she tried to flee, innocent people might be hurt or her captors might retaliate by threatening her family or her dear, sweet Toby or —

  
She ran out of terrible options by the time the car reached a nearly empty warehouse.

  
'He'll speak with you in there,' the Blackberry woman said.

  
'Wh-who will?' Molly said.

  
'Names are irrelevant.'

  
The shaking only grew worse as Molly headed for the building.

  
Inside was a man. There weren't enough lights in the place to show anything more of his face than shadows. Pointing his umbrella at the chair, he said, almost as if he were bored about the whole situation, 'Have a seat, Molly.'  
If he was bored, that meant he had done this before. And if he had done this before, he was involved in awful things, crimes no doubt, the sort that Sherlock solved.

  
Oh no, why did she ever get into the car? Why didn't she run?

  
The next time her family saw her would be on a slab, provided her body could even be identified and why, why did he have to say the precious words that were on her skin to make this even worse? Yes, they were common enough — hearing _have a seat_ from a stranger was nearly enough to make her scream in frustration — but it wasn't right that her likely killer was going to say something her soul mate should have. God, Mum was going to be so disappointed that that man who was always gallivanting about with Mrs Peel killed her daughter, especially when his hat was missing. Mum always swore he was a fine gentleman. Molly held back a panicked laugh at the absurd thought.

  
Maybe she had gone mad on the car ride here.

  
'Trust me when I say that the sooner this is over, the better,' the unknown man said.

  
Her legs gave out. She wished her consciousness had done the same. Unfortunately, it had only gone grey because she felt exactly when the man reached her. As he attempted to help her sit up, she mumbled, 'Please don't kill me, Mr Steed.'

  
His hands were gone from her in an instant.

  
She looked up, blinking rapidly. What had changed? Why did her captor sound scared? Her heart pounded. A terrible sickness swelled up from her stomach. Each breath came in awful gasps, as if there wasn't enough air in the warehouse. For too long, it seemed she would die. Yet underneath it all, there grew a strange calmness, like she had reached the eye of a great storm. This stranger, whoever he was, hadn't wanted to harm her. She knew that now. Her delirious plea for her life had unnerved him, somehow.

  
The man paced before her, his umbrella forgotten on the concrete floor, fingers curling into white-knuckled fists. Occasionally he would glance in her direction. He stopped moving after what seemed hours. His face was horribly bloodless as he said, 'Reports gave no indication of you having a soul mark.'

  
'W-what? I don't ... What does that have to do with anything?' She managed to stand, albeit on somewhat unsteady feet. 'Who are you? Why am I here?'

  
He seemed to gather himself in the space it took her to talk. 'Your mark. Where is it?'

  
'That's, that's, that's private.' She was not going to tell whoever he was that her marking was in a place she would have to shave in order for it to be properly read. Most the people she dated never came that close to such a confession or an actual sighting.

  
Giving her a discerning look, he said, 'Yes, I suppose it would have to be if it was too embarrassing to place in a registry or share with your friends.'

  
Molly had half a mind to pick up his umbrella and throw it at him. Not that she would. She valued her life that much. 'Please let me leave. I'm nothing. No one. I don't matter and don't have anything that you want.'

  
A pained expression flashed over him before he could properly school himself into nonchalance. 'You are ... most certainly a woman of vital importance, Ms Hooper, more so than I initially realised.'

  
The sick, heavy feeling in her middle only worsened at that comment. 'I don't understand.'

  
He unbuttoned his suit jacket, and, after shrugging from it, tossed the garment onto the chair. With precise movements, he rolled up his left sleeve. His voice was oddly stilted as he read the words inscribed there, '"Please don't kill me, Mr Steed."'

  
'Oh.' And now she understood why her stomach rolled so badly, much more so than it ever had when looking at anyone handsome, even Sherlock with his lovely eyes and unmarked skin. For better or worse, this was one of the various feelings one had when meeting her match. 'So you're ...?'

  
'Yes.'

  
'And I'm ...?'

  
Dismay and fascination worked through his features in equal measure. 'Without a doubt.'

  
'Is that why I'm here?'

  
'Not in the least.'

  
Her heart squeezed. Didn't he _want_ her?

  
He seemed to notice her shift in mood for he quickly said, 'My reasons for having you brought to me were ... well, I suppose there is little point in hiding my original intentions. Mummy would have me buried in my own rose garden if I attempted lying to you.'

  
This new information, a veritable flood coming from him, nearly set her head swimming again. 'Mummy?'

  
'Yes.' His sigh was an exasperated one. 'She will insist on meeting you, to both our misfortunes. But if you can withstand Sherlock's company, you can withstand the rest of the family.' An unspoken _I hope_ seemed to follow that second statement.

  
For now, Molly latched onto the most familiar bit of what he said. 'You know Sherlock?'

  
'I am his brother.'

  
A piece of the puzzle clicked indelibly into place for Molly. She approached him tentatively, placing her fingertips on his bare forearm. There were her words on his flesh, proof that she could be loved. She looked at him with so many questions on her tongue.

  
'Mycroft Holmes,' he said softly, answering one of those silent questions. 'We have much to discuss, Ms Hooper.'

  
She said, 'You called me Molly before. I ... I liked that.'

  
Fingers settled over hers, a thumb racing across her knuckles, surprisingly warm.

  
'Molly.'

 

* * *


	5. Molly and Greg

* * *

**Molly and Greg:**   
_They didn't start with fireworks, but that's okay._

* * *

The words on her stomach were absolutely ordinary.

  
_Hello. Nice to meet you._

  
Of course. They couldn't be anything interesting, anything unique. That would be too easy for Molly Hooper. In teenage years, her soul mark stung her whenever she met other people. The first boyfriend she slept with laughed when he read the words, saying, 'Is that it?'

  
As if he had room to talk. David's were, _Oh God, not you._

  
By the time she went to uni, it didn't bother her, really. Not everyone could be memorable. She only hoped to be lucky enough to find whoever had her corresponding phrase.

  
* * *

  
Sherlock fascinated her, naturally. Less than three percent of people on the planet were without markings over the age of thirty. Many who were had once had them, which meant their matches had died. But he claimed to never have had anything and seemed oddly proud of that fact.

  
With his intelligence and striking looks, it was no wonder she let herself imagine she might have one of those rare matches where a mark spontaneous appeared on her other half.

  
Some of the loneliness eased thanks to fantasy.

  
* * *

  
Not long after meeting Sherlock, perhaps four months, she met _him_ when he followed the younger consulting detective through the door of her shared office like an annoyed shadow.

  
'Don't understand why you couldn't just read the reports same as everyone else,' the older man said.

  
'I read the reports,' Sherlock said with his typical air of long-suffering soul, the one that always made Molly bite the inside of her cheek. 'They aren't detailed enough compared to the real thing.' As if just noticing her standing from her desk, his face brightened. 'Molly. There you are. So glad to see you. Is that a new blusher you're using?'

  
His silver-haired companion shot Sherlock a disbelieving stare.

  
Unconsciously, her hand rose but stopped short of touching her face. There was ink on her fingers from filling out the latest autopsy report and God, she still smelled something like the morgue even after using the employee showers. Why didn't she bring lemons for her hair, today of all days? 'Oh, no, it's the same as always, Sherlock.'

  
'Hm,' he said. 'Are you sure? Because you look quite different today. Perhaps it's the jumper.' When he smiled, it reached his eyes. 'Pink seems to be your colour.'

  
'Th-thank you.' Her face was on fire after the compliment. He liked her silly old jumper? She glanced at the other man in the room, who seemed to be trying very hard not to look at anything but the floor now.

  
Sherlock naturally noticed this and answered her question before she could ask it. 'DI Lestrade, Molly Hooper. Molly Hooper, DI Lestrade.'

  
Lestrade perked up at mention of his name. He offered Molly his hand without really seeming to think about it. 'Hello. Nice to meet you.'

  
The words hardly registered with her, although the butterfly feeling she always had around Sherlock only grew more noticeable. She automatically reached over her desk to shake hands. The unthinking move sent her coffee cup and its contents sloshing over her nice new report. 'Oh no, no, no, I just finished writing that! Stupid, stupid.'

  
Using what seemed to be a thousand tissues from the box on her desk, she dabbed up the dark liquid before it could encroach on her keyboard. Through it all, her face turned as hot as the sun and her pulse hit a ludicrous tempo. She looked like an idiot in front of not only Sherlock but someone he obviously worked with as well. Fantastic, Molly. What will you do for an encore? Looking back, she said, 'Sorry, I don't know what's come over me. Too much caffeine, I think.'

  
Lestrade looked at her in alarm, while Sherlock glanced between his friend and Molly with an alarming amount of fascination. Oh, what now?

  
'No, I don't think that's it,' Sherlock said.

  
'Don't,' Lestrade said.

  
'Don't what?'

  
'Don't say anything, Sherlock. Please. I'll call you on every interesting case from here to Christmas, just don't say anything.'

  
Well, Sherlock could be a bit prickly sometimes, so it was nice of Lestrade to rein him in for Molly. The tension in her stomach eased a fraction, although the rest of her remained wobbly. Her temples throbbed as if on the verge of headache. How much coffee had she gone through already? 'Really, Sherlock, I'm fine. I've had about four or five cups, that's all. I'm clumsy after drinking too much of it. Don't mind me.'

  
'I should go,' Lestrade said. He twisted furiously at his wedding ring. Looking to Sherlock, he added, 'Find whatever you can with the Morrison murder and phone me then. Other than that, say nothing, all right?'

  
The other man began, 'I don't see the point in tha —'

  
'If you want to keep consulting, you bloody well better keep your mouth shut on this.' Lestrade looked abashed at what he said. 'Er, sorry about that, Ms Hooper. The cursing.' His gaze seemed unable to meet hers for longer than a few seconds. 'Nice meeting you, really. Have to go now. Good morning.'

  
The room seemed cooler in his wake.

  
After a silence, Sherlock said, 'Molly?'

  
'Yes?' she said.

  
'How do you feel?'

  
'Like an idiot. I'll have to write that report all over again.'

  
'No, I mean ... are you well?'

  
She frowned. Why was he asking that? 'I'm a little lightheaded, I guess. And my stomach ...' Molly deposited loads of sopping tissues into the bin next to her desk. Shaking her head, she said, 'It's nothing really. Should've had tea today instead of coffee. Don't fret over it. Now, I know you must be here for a reason. Didn't your friend mention something about Mrs Morrison?'

  
His eyes seemed to be elsewhere. What great deductions was he making today? 'Morrison, yes.'

  
'I'll take you to her just as soon as I get this cleaned up a bit more.'

  
He didn't object or grumble about time, instead retreating to the chair in the desk opposite hers. Mostly, he watched her with a thoughtful expression.

  
She was on edge for the rest of shift.

  
* * *

  
After several trying weeks in which Sherlock asked a little too often after her well-being, whatever interest he had in his "project" on her was abruptly dropped in the aftermath of a case involving double-identities, a purportedly haunted castle, an arms dealer, and a half-dozen stolen Dachshunds.

  
Thank God. Answering his questions on her libido did not quite go the way she had envisioned it would in her fantasies.

  
* * *

  
Time passed, as it always did. Things happened. Work. Life. Death. Jim Moriarty who most definitely _wasn't_ from IT. Molly was lonely and then she wasn't with a small succession of romantic partners. But on one particular Christmas, she found herself unattached and at 221B Baker Street, looking forward to familiar faces, one in particular. The gifts she brought seemed buoyed by an extra bit of hope this year.

  
There were greetings all around, except from Sherlock, but he was always off with his head in the clouds. She didn't mind. John Watson seemed to appreciate her dress more than he should have and Greg Lestrade offered to get her wine, so she knew she wasn't invisible to men. Just the one that mattered.

  
She thanked Greg for the wine, although she was a bit surprised that he wasn't in Dorset and mentioned it. They'd grown to know a bit more about one another since first meeting; whenever he happened to come into St Bart's with Sherlock, he always seemed to make a remark on how well the consulting detective got along with the pathologist, as if he were keenly interested in seeing them matched. Having someone on her side was nice, for once.

  
As for the current subject of Dorset, Greg said that he'd be going in the morning with his wife, saying that they'd patched things up. His smile gave Molly's stomach an odd flutter.

  
If only she could have a husband as obviously devoted as he was one day.

  
(someday)

  
_(someday)_

  
And in the way that Sherlock always ruined things, he said, 'No, she's sleeping with a P.E. teacher. I told you that it would have been much better off if you had just —'

  
'Sherlock.'

  
There was no mistaking the warning in Greg's voice or the anger on his face.

  
'It's true,' Sherlock said, unblinking.

  
'I _know_.' The devastation in those two words was hard to hear. Watching one friend say things like that to another was unbearable. And the way the detective inspector looked, God.

  
Molly stood from her chair. Looking at Sherlock, she said, 'You always say such awful things. Always.'

  
Everyone stared at her in different degrees of shock. But John's current girlfriend seemed the most amused by Molly's outburst, or rather Sherlock's surprise about it. The ensuing silence was killed by an orgasmic sound from the great detective's jacket, breaking mostly everyone into titters.

  
She didn't stay long after that. Took her coat, left the gifts behind. It was to her surprise, to her eternal surprise, that she didn't leave alone.

  
Greg stood with her at the kerb as he poked around in his coat for a cigarette. He found one, lit it.

  
'Waiting for something?' he said, expelling smoke.

  
(always)

  
_(always)_

  
'Taxi,' she said.

  
He looked along the street. 'Don't think one's coming any time soon, and even if it was, it'd be going against my civic duty to leave a beautiful woman in the cold.'

  
Beautiful. She wasn't — Sherlock called her beautiful once. The word didn't mean anything. It was just a nice thing to say on Christmas. She smiled at Greg anyway.

  
'The car's over there,' he said with a nod, pitching his cigarette into the fresh-fallen snow along the gutter.

  
'Isn't that littering?' she said, aware of how foolish that sounded.

  
His grin was wry, lopsided. Nice. Nice to see the sadness fade from his face, just a little. 'You're an accomplice.'

  
Her heart stuttered. This was what having a friendly conversation was like. A friendship. The words, he meant them. Not like ... Well, that didn't bear thinking about right now. Bravery drove the next sentence from her. 'We'd better go before anyone catches us at the scene of the crime.'

  
Strange, to feel so bold. Maybe it was the wine.

  
But then she nearly slipped and he just had to catch her hand, didn't he?

  
Fire bloomed in her chest. Her face. Her ... No. Couldn't think of him like that. First Sherlock and then ... No. Not a married man. Fingers curling into his as they shouldn't have done, she said, 'Thank you.'

  
He nodded. Why did he look so distressed?

  
His wife. That was right. His wife and the terrible thing Sherlock had said. The deduction. Molly let her hand drop from his. It was the right thing to do.

  
(but how wrong, wrong, wrong it felt)

  
The drive home was comfortable and quiet and she never wanted to leave.

  
(the right thing to do)

  
* * *

  
The decision was simple, in the end.

  
Divorce.

  
Greg once thought it an ugly word. Tonight, car idly outside Molly's flat as he watched her disappear inside, tracing words on his arm where they weren't completely covered by his shirt and jacket and coat —

  
_... finished writing that! Stupid, stupid._

  
— it only sounded like a promise.

  
* * *

  
Locking the door behind her, she still felt his fingers against her own and his touch had felt like something she was waiting for, an expectation, a prophecy fulfilled, a —

 

_Knock, knock_ went someone's hand at the door.

  
* * *

  
It wasn't very surprising to find him standing on the other side.

  
'I'm your s —' he started.

  
'I know.'

  
He looked incredulous. 'You know. Did Sherlock ...?'

  
'I've always known, I think. But ...' Her throat was terribly dry as she gathered her thoughts into words. 'But I only understood it tonight.'

  
They watched each other for a while, as if expecting something to happen, something to go wrong. Something.

  
'Can I ...?' she began.

  
'I think that'd be all right,' he said.

  
As their arms went around one another, it was.

 

* * *


	6. Molly and Sherlock

* * *

**Molly and Sherlock:**   
_Destiny is only a word._

* * *

The jumble of letters on her right bicep amounted to little.

  
'You're new here.'

  
Nothing she hadn't heard before. Silly of her to like the squeeze in her chest when the stranger, this tall stranger with his fascinating eyes and dark voice said her three words. Silly. And hopeless.

  
'Perhaps you could help me with a small predicament,' he added after a space.

  
Before she could reply, his slight frown softened into a smile. Everything about him changed. His expression warmed. His lips parted just so, bowed and pink and soft. His hand fell lightly on her shoulder. He swept her to one side of the canteen doors, his body bent to hers, his breath hot against her neck, 'In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, for they in thee a thousand errors note ...'

  
Poetry. That was poetry. Familiar. Why ...?

  
'But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,' he said. His head twisted slightly, as if to look at another part of her, inspect it, tear it down to the molecules. He didn't touch. 'Who in despite of view is pleased to dote ...' An exhalation fluttered her hair. 'Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted —'

  
A strange man recited poetry, a sonnet, to her in the middle of work. Ridiculous. Wonderful. An answer appeared in her head like magic. He couldn't be anyone else.

  
'— nor tender feeling to base touches prone, nor taste, nor smell —'

  
Two security guards gave them a cursory look.

  
He stopped speaking to kiss her cheek, and the guards moved on, abashed.

  
'— desire to be invited to any sensual feast with thee alone,' she completed, her face buzzing as if it touched by electricity, just a tiny spark.

  
And he recoiled.

  
'I've never heard of anyone using Shakespeare to escape security before,' she said. Her stomach fluttered oddly. She smiled, all too aware of just how uneven it must have looked. 'You must be that Sherlock Holmes I've heard so much about. You're part of orientation, you know.'

  
'Am I?' he said hollowly.

  
'Everyone says you're a terror but I think that was dead brilliant, like something out of an adventure,' she finished as her ears burned. Did she always have to sound so stupid around attractive men? She offered a hand. 'I, er ... Molly Hooper. It's nice to meet you.'

  
His mouth worked as if he was about to say something. When he finally did, it was, 'There is no such thing as fate. Free will matters. Nothing can bind me. Nothing. This base emotion, this ...'

  
'W-what? I don't underst —'

  
'I'm sorry.' He spun on his heel and fled.

  
She stayed in place minutes afterward, a terrible emptiness behind her ribs.

  
* * *

  
He never returned.

 

* * *

  
\- Fini -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A happy ending wasn't in the stars.


End file.
